MARGAO: The Shadow Council for Margao (SCM) has expressed its doubts over the proposed GIS survey that the government plans to conduct through a contractor. In response to the news report published in OHeraldo’s Thursday edition, SCM called the GIS survey exercise ‘an eye-wash to dampen the resistance from the loyal taxpayers’.
The SCM has urged the Urban Development Minister Vishwajit Rane and the Directorate of Municipal Administration to ensure that the GIS survey doesn’t remain just a survey in the files, but that the survey reports are implemented by the Council.
SCM Convener Savio Coutinho said that the citizens and loyal taxpayers have strongly objected to the 50 percent hike in waste collection fees. As the hike is applicable only to the legally assessed residential and commercial premises, and the commercial premises operating with valid licenses, these taxpayers are in the mood for a civil disobedience movement, which is likely to result in non-payment of taxes to the civic body.
Realizing the significance of this civil disobedience movement, the government has now come out with another lie of conducting a GIS survey, he alleged.
“In the past, the MMC spent several lakhs on a GIS survey conducted as a pilot project in ward no 14. However, after the report was presented by the agency, which alarmingly projected a revenue loss of over Rs 3.50 crore, the same report was dumped in cold storage,” alleged Coutinho.
He stated that they had filed RTI applications/appeals before the First Appellate authority, however till date, all the details of this survey have not been furnished to them. Even the contract/agreement with the agency and the payment vouchers pertaining to the outgoings towards this pilot project are not traceable at the Council, he lamented.
Claiming that the announcement about the GIS survey of Moti Dongor and Azad Nagar is yet another reason to consider this as a cruel joke against the demands of the loyal taxpayers, Coutinho said that the MMC taxation section should be aware that the majority of the hutments of Azad Nagar are already assessed for house tax. “It’s a shame if they don’t,” Coutinho said.
SCM claimed that the huts at Azad Nagar that are pending for assessment are those that are illegally constructed by the slum lords there, on vacant land that was kept for the construction of religious worship places, and added that the land belongs to the Konkan Railway Corporation.
